8 Ways To Ensure Your Vision Is Valued

Sarah was working at home in the evening. A friend of her husband’s came by to visit. As he visited with her husband he looked over at Sarah who was intently focused on her work. The friend wondered what Sarah was doing that drew her complete attention and asked, “For heaven’s sake, what are you doing working so hard this late in the evening?” Sarah looked up, a bit annoyed, and said, “I’m trying to cure cancer!” Sarah is not a cell and molecular biologist, she is an HR executive--but she saw a clear connection between the work that she was doing and the strategy and vision of the company.

Are your employees like Sarah? Are they helping to cure cancer or are they doing meaningless busy work because they see no connection to their work and the vision of the company? Our research shows there is a substantial positive impact to an organization when employees can see how their work contributes to the company’s vision.

We studied the impact of having a meaningful vision on the engagement of employees. The graph below provides some interesting insights. Employees who don’t find their company’s vision meaningful at all have average engagement scores of only 16 percent. These are employees who do not care about the future success of the organization. They work primarily for a pay check and are willing to do very little beyond what is absolutely required to keep their jobs. Those who find their organizations’ vision meaningful have engagement levels that are 18 percentile points above average.

Making the Vision More the Words on Paper

We looked at data from over 50,000 employee to understand the key factors that made a vision more meaningful. In our research we found eight elements that are significant as follows:

1. The Vision is Inspiring and Motivating

Read any vision statement and ask yourself, “Is that inspiring to the employees?” It is not hard to tell. I believe the best vision statements will be inspiring to both investors and internal stakeholders. Effective vision statements tell a story of the benefit the organization creates, the impact the products and services have on others, and the kind of organization that is required to create that value.

2. Employees Engagement and Satisfaction is High

We found in our research that engaged employees are more likely to agree on the vision. We are not sure which comes first—the engagement or the agreement--but both sides create movement, we have found. Clearly, creating a vision that employees accept and value creates engagement, and engaged employees are more likely to resonate with the vision rather than fight against it.

3. The Vision is Communicated through Multiple Channels

In many organizations the vision is not communicated often enough or through sufficient channels to stay present and familiar to employees. There appears to be a prevalent debate about who has the job of communicating the vision. Many believe it is the CEO’s job. But in the best organizations it clear that every leader and every function sees it as their responsibility to “own” and communicate the vision. When the communication comes from all leaders and from a variety of, the possibility of having the vision then embraced and executed increases substantially.

4. Innovation is used to Create Improvement

Excellent visions are aspirational and future focused. When people feel the organization is stuck in the past and unable to marshal the fresh energy it requires to move into a new future they have a hard time taking the vision to heart. Employees need to see that the organization is capable of world-class innovation.

5. Managers’ Words Lead to Action

In organizations where words are rarely acted upon, vision statements become meaningless words with no reality attached. Employees need to have faith that the future reality described in the vision statement can be real.

6. Leaders are Open and Honest

When there is little trust in leaders and a feeling that leaders communicate only in sound bites designed to manipulate good will, the vision ends up being regarded as meaningless PR. Leaders need to be trustworthy and to demonstrate that they are willing to speak the truth. One of the key ways leaders can build this trust is by sharing the bad news along with the good when difficulties occur.